In this study, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods were fabricated on Zn-coated Si(100) substrates by two steps: pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and catalyst-free thermal evaporation process. First, the Zn films were pre-deposited on Si(100) substrates by PLD. Then the ZnO nanorods grew on Zn-coated Si(100) substrate by the simple thermal evaporation of the metallic zinc powder at 1000 °C with oxygen–argon mixtures, without any catalysts. The as-synthesized ZnO nanorods were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectrum (FTIR). The results show that the ZnO nanorods are highly crystalline with the hexagonal structure wurtzite. The optical band gaps resulted ~3.37 eV and photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of as-synthesized ZnO nanorods exhibits a UV emission peak at 383 nm and a broad green emission peak at 520 nm. In addition, the growth mechanism of ZnO nanostructures is also briefly discussed. Copyright © 2013 American Scientific Publishers.

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